Paper short abstract:

Meshwork refers to how individuals and knowledges are entanglements that emerge through encounters with others, as "lines of becoming." It is a useful metaphor to help us become skilled in the recursive practice of learning from difference to explore how science might be done differently.

Paper long abstract:

In the global environmental change research community, local knowledge is viewed as a necessary input into problem framing and the crafting of locally appropriate "actionable" science. In this co-production approach, local knowledge systems are often parsed and transformed to fit within the epistemological premises of western science. Such extractive processes treat local knowledge as an object for science, rather than as systems of knowledges that could inform science. In this paper I explore the social conditions under which shared knowledge becomes defined, produced, reproduced, and distributed (or repressed and eliminated) in struggles for legitimacy between different ways of knowing in global environmental change research. To do this I propose using the 'meshwork' metaphor to describe how individuals and knowledges are entanglements that emerge through encounters with others, as 'lines of becoming.' Ingold (2011) proposed using the 'meshwork' metaphor to characterize the trails along which knowledge develops, which have histories, stories, and trajectories that are full of loose ends and always on the move. From this perspective, local knowledge systems grow and become integrated horizontally, or 'alongly.' The meshwork metaphor is useful to help us understand and become skilled in the recursive practice of learning from local knowledge systems to explore how science might be done differently.